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“Freddie!” The shout fills the hallway as I look in both directions, trying to sense where she went. But it’s pointless. Maybe I’m just a motherfucking sorry excuse of a husband. Maybe the whole sixth sense thing is complete and utter bollocks.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!
Hurling the phone in my hand at the wall, I follow it up with punch that grinds my knuckles.
I shake Freddie’s hand from my shoulder as he tries to pull me from the wall I’m hammering with my bludgeoning fists.
“The cameras,” I blurt, slapping my hands on the wall, pressing my forehead between them. “Check them all.”
“On it.”
That’s all he says before he walks towards one of the staff-only doors.
“Wait.” I pick up the phone at my feet. “Check it too.”
He catches it. “We’ll find her.”
I nod. “Track my phone. I know he has her.”
There’s not a single spark of doubt.
“Arabella’s tough. She’ll give him hell, and when we find him…”
“I’ll send him there.”
One hour and twenty-three minutes, seven floors, two hundred and three rooms later… there’s nothing. No trace. Nothing.
“Stop fucking pacing,” Freddie bites from where he’s sitting at the security desk of the hotel. He’s going through every possible camera.
“Try her phone again.”
“If it’s off, I can’t trace it!”
“Mine.”
“Same thing.”
“There has to be something we’ve missed. A camera we haven’t looked at.” Casper stops in front of me, the worry on his face a mirror of mine.
“The garage cameras?” Turning to Freddie, I ignore the noise coming from the hallway as Dad steps in the room with Mum and Benedict following behind him.
“Tell Mercy,” Mum snaps at Benedict.
“Not until I have more to tell her. Last thing I need is her going into a blind panic. You know what she’s like.”
“Her daughter is missing!”
“My daughter, Penelope. My child is missing, and I’m doing everything I can to get her back.”
“Anything new?” Dad asks. His weariness betrays his controlled tone.
Shaking my head, I feel like the little boy who’d just buried his hamster in the back garden, stumbling in with mud covering my hands and feet, my clothes soaked through and my broken heart clogging my throat.
“I have every man available on this.” The assurance in his voice does nothing to quell the terror inside me. “We’re going to find her, I promise you.”
He promised everything would be okay as he cleaned me up that day. I believed him. Eventually it was. After some time I stopped thinking about Herbert. I stopped missing the creak of his wheel at night or the tapping of the ball stopper when he went for a drink.
But Arabella isn’t a pet. She’s every beat of my he
